LM: The basis of civil defense was self-help, and family self-help in
particular. And women, women's groups believed that they were the best
personnel to perform this work because they were custodians of the family
according to the traditional gender stereotypes of the time. And so they could
be the custodians of the family during nuclear attack, and that it was a very
appropriate role for them to take on, especially when the country was in the
midst of a cold war...

They argued that they had a rightful place in the civil defense establishment,
that this shouldn't be a male-only affair, this shouldn't be only about
military preparedness in the sense that only men could participate, that if
civil defense was premised on family self help, then women should actually take
fifty percent, if not more, of the responsibility for doing this, for
protecting the family.

Q: And what did, how did Truman's administration respond to the women's
demands that they be given a role in civil defense?

LM: Well initially, the Truman administration gave very little thought to what
women were going to do.. And since the government wasn't prepared to define the
role for women, women decided to define the role for themselves. And they
argued that they could play a very important role in terms of providing welfare
services, for example. Because in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, of
course, people would need medical care, psychological counseling, food,
clothing, shelter, and these voluntary women's organizations argued that they
were already set up to provide the kind of welfare services that only women
could provide. And so they really took charge and they led the civil defense
administration to define women's role. So it really came from the bottom up,
not from the top down.

Q: One way that the Truman Administration encouraged women to take part in
civil defense was as "gossips." Can you talk about that?

LM: Throughout the 1950s, there was an emphasis on women teaching others to
prepare for nuclear war. And one of the things that the civil defense
establishment did was appoint female civil defense administrators. There was
one during the Truman administration and there were several during the
Eisenhower administration. And in fact, there was a national women's civil
defense advisory council. And if you read the literature and the speeches of
these female representatives, of the FCDA, all of them argued that gossip could
be a tool, that women were very good at gossiping, talking to their neighbors.
And that in fact, spreading the word about civil defense was nothing different
than gossiping to one's neighbors about what was going on in the neighborhood,
about different techniques in child care, about new cleaning techniques, that
this was a very natural extension of women's work. And in fact actually that
was the pitch that women administrators in the FCDA.